Once dismissed as crazy celebrity choices – remember Apple and Pilot – word names, for babies, thanks mostly to those celebs– have gone mainstream. From rising River to why-not Wolfe, many of the best boy names in 2016 are borrowed from the dictionary. They’re stylish, meaningful, and different, but still easy to say and spell, and starbaby parents from LivTyler to TerrenceHoward have embraced the trend. Here are twelve of the best recent word names–they just might inspire a bold boy name choice for your own son.By Abby Sandel.

Sometimes it feels like girls have some unfair advantages when it comes to names. They get all the pretty flower and gem names and some of the best color names as well, like Violet and Scarlet and Rose. But we’re here to say that there are great, colorful names for boys as well—and that doesn’t even count all the Irish names with red meanings like Flynn, Rory, Rowan, Rufus and Rooney. Here, 12 multicolored names for boys. (By Linda Rosenkrantz)

If you look below the Top 1000 baby names on the US popularity list, you’ll find an awful lot of word names for boys inching up toward visibility. These are mostly names that didn’t exist a decade ago, but now the fashion for word names — nature names and inspirational names and tough-guy names and just regular word names — is inspiring parents to consider them more seriously.

You may be interested in finding a new and unique name for your son that is also easy to understand, pronounce, and spell. Or perhaps one of these word names has a special meaning for you — Arrow if you’re an archer, say, or Pike for a fishing enthusiast.

Or maybe you’re just curious about the really unusual names some parents are choosing these days. The hot new word names for boys include:

Happy Leap Day! There are more than 10,000 babies born every day in the United States, and around 360,000 born worldwide. If you’re celebrating the birth of a child today, he’ll grow up with the rarest of birthdays.

It would be tempting to name your new leapling – that’s the term used for anyone celebrating a birthday on February 29th – according to the calendar. Names that mean rare could work. A name that refers to the number four would be fitting, too.

But here’s another idea: since we refer to February 29th by the energetic name Leap Day, how about an active verb name for a son – or daughter – born today?

They range from Top 100 choices to retro names to rarities, but any one of these baby names would convey an energy and excitement that’s just right for a Leap Year baby.

Not since the Virtue Names of the Puritans have so many new words morphed into names. In recent years we’ve seen everything from the ridiculous (Peanut, Pirate) to the sublime (Serenity, Dream), and lately there’s been a rush of new weather, seasonal, and directional names. What’s next? Here are a few possibilities.